Rank Fast with these Topical Authority Tactics Ep.589
In this podcast episode featuring SEO Specialist Matthew Bertram, the focus is on demystifying Topical Authority in SEO and providing actionable…
Link Building
Yandex Data Leak: The Ranking Factors & The Myths We Found Part 2 Ep. 564
Analysis of the Yandex source code leak confirms that dwell time, backlink quality, anchor text diversity, and on-page ad ratios are real ranking factors, offering lessons applicable to Google SEO strategy.
Key takeaways
- Dwell time appears in 102 Yandex ranking factors, contradicting Google's public claim that it does not use such signals.
- Backlinks from home pages carry more weight than internal pages, and the link spam calculator uses around 80 active factors.
- Anchor text diversity matters: mix branded, commercial, unbranded, and naked URL anchors for a natural link profile.
- YMYL content requires clear authorship, publication dates, and trust signals, or rankings can suffer in both Yandex and Google.
- A high ratio of advertisements to visible content is a negative ranking factor in Yandex, mirroring Google's approach.
About this episode
Prove how your SEO efforts impact bottom-line metrics for clients with this step-by-step guide.
Questions this episode answers
What does the Yandex data leak reveal about dwell time as a ranking factor?
The leak shows 102 ranking factors contain a dwell time tag referencing user duration or average page dwell time. This conflicts with Google's public stance that it does not use dwell time or similar user interaction signals, but the hosts argue internal data and SEO experience suggest dwell time does matter.
What are the best practices for building backlinks according to the Yandex leak?
Build links with a natural frequency and varying amounts, use branded anchor text alongside commercial keywords, avoid buying links from websites with mixed topics, and prioritize quality over quantity. The age of a backlink, link relevance by topic, and whether a link comes from a home page versus an internal page are all factors.
How does Yandex use Metrica analytics data for ranking?
Six ranking factors relate to Metrica data, including average time spent on URLs by similar visitors, average time a user spends on a host when accessed from an external non-search site, average depth of pages visited, and whether the domain has Metrica installed. One of the six factors is tagged as deprecated.
Does the Yandex leak apply to Google SEO?
The hosts and the analysis by Dan Taylor suggest yes. Tens of engineers have worked at both companies, meaning similar approaches may exist across both search engines. Factors like dwell time, YMYL content treatment, backlink quality, and ad-to-content ratios appear in both systems.
In their words
I would even say, I would gander to say that on page interactions are more important than any other ranking factor.
Matt Bertram
The link spam calculator has around 80 active factors that are taken into consideration.
Host
if you have too many spammy links to good links, it puts this kind of damper effect on your rankings
Matt Bertram
Terms defined in this episode
- YMYL (Your Money Your Life)
- A category of content covering medical, legal, and financial topics that Yandex and Google treat with stricter ranking requirements around authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and accuracy.
- Pessimization
- A Yandex penalty that reduces a page rank to zero, representing one of the most severe punishments available in the Yandex ranking system.
- Spam Karma
- A Yandex ranking concept that penalizes hosts and individual domains associated with spammy neighborhoods or low-quality link environments.
- Metrica
- Yandex's analytics platform, equivalent to Google Analytics, which comes with built-in heat map tools and user session recording and whose data feeds into several Yandex ranking factors.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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